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The Vanessa Files

Vanessa came to visit us about two weeks ago. She’s a friend of ours from NJ who actually beat us to Cali. A few years ago, a bunch of us went to Las Vegas for our friends Matt and Rachel’s Bachelor/Bachelorette parties. Me, Kristyn and Vanessa waxed poetic about moving to California and even planned on doing it all together if gumption in numbers is what kind of motivation we’d need. Well, Vanessa ended up just up and moving to Sacramento three years ago while me and Kristyn stayed in Dirty Jerz crying silent tears. We got our duffs up (as you know) and moved to LA this fall. Sacramento is approximately six hours away from LA by car so we’d been planning to chill with her but have had a cash flow (ie. Coleen’s not gainfully employed) problem.

Vanessa does all kinds of gruesome monster makeup for cold hard cash. Movies, music videos, even por la policia. She had to travel to an area near us to make all sorts of awful bruises and maims on people to mimick various sorts of abuses so that police officers could learn how to take photos of victims in real-time situations. Awesome right?

Anyway, she put her noodle to the test and devised a plan to make the trip into a twofer and come see us! We hadn’t seen each other in a long time so we jawed on a lot about the most awful subjects. For no damn reason, all we ever wanted to discuss was murder, mental illness, crimes, deaths that take place in spectatular fashions, etc, etc, etc. Now don’t blame Vanessa for that shit because she makes bruises on people. We were all to blame for that shit haha.

Vanessa is pretty familiar with LA. She grew up nearby so her parents took her into LA on a regular growing up. She’s never been without her parents though so there was some poking around she wanted to do that her parents might’ve otherwise put the kibosh on. That being said, she was also pretty open for whateva.

SO, on Friday night we decided to take her roller skating. Let me tell you what guys. I am here to say that Vanessa is almost a professional skater she’s so damn good. I’m still in the “go around twice and then take a break” mode while she was able to go around and around and around and around and never take a break. So good.

After that, we went to the Punky Reggae Party at La Cita Downtown. There we met up with Vanessa’s friend Lisal who was AWESOME. She’s a burgeoning actress and so damn funny. What with St. Patrick’s Day being earlier that week, I decided to have an Irish Car Bomb. I didn’t feel buzzy but I musta been because we all ate pizza when we got back home.

Kristyn (L) and Me (R)

The next day, Kristyn had to work so we sat around and chilled like lazy assholes all day. Vanessa’s nephew’s birthday was coming up and he NEEDED an Alien figurine in the way that I NEED this, this, this, this, this and this. The point is: I feel him.

WANT

So Vanessa wanted to go to weird toy stores that might have such a thing. So I suggested Wacko bc it was close and has a lot of weird toys. Unfortunately, Wacko doesn’t care about Alien vs. Predator because they did not provide the goods we were looking for. They do have an art gallery though and so we spent a lot of time looking around in there. Look at the pictures of the artwork called “If I had a Monkey” (above) and “Misunderstood Monsters” (below). Those are QUILTS. Amazing right? Too bad they’re worth a coupla thousand dollars or I’d definitely buy the “If I had a Monkey” one. It basically says, “If I had a Monkey: I’d talk to him about all my problems, I’d think about him when he wasn’t here, I’d keep him warm in the winter, I’d feed him candy, I’d have a good time with him, I’d wonder about his powers of cognitive reasoning.” Haha. I might have the text wrong because it’s kind of blurry on my computer but that last one just gets me.

NEED

After that, we went to Chin Chin’s. It’s Vanessa’s fav restaurant in LA. This is actually the second Chin Chin’s we’ve gone to with her, one here and one in Las Vegas. We sat at a table on the sidewalk and chatted with a guy next to me after he dropped his cane and I went to pick it up. He said, “I got it! Where you gonna be tomorrow if I drop it?” Check mate.

On Sunday we got up and took Vanessa to Necromance because it’s awesome and up her alley. There are two stores actually. One has bones and exoskeletons of animals and the other has kinda gothy morbidy things that fit right into our themed weekend. The formaldahyde smell in the exoskeleton store got to me and Kristyn so we went outside and tried to take pictures in front of a taxidermied deer to make it seem like her head was on its body. It didn’t work out. We dropped Kristyn off at work and decided to head down to Santa Monica because I was under a voodoo spell thinking that there was another cool toy store there. Either I am hallucinating or it closed up shop because the place we went to was narrow on toys. There was one kind of “ah we’ll give it the old college try” store. It was called “Puzzle Town” or some shit and had like teddy bears on the front of it. Of all places HERE is where we procured our evil plaything. We couldn’t find Alien though so Vanessa said, “Well he’s getting Predator and he’s gonna like it” or something less threatening and more maternal.

Then Vanessa wanted to go to Kat Von D’s shop High Voltage to get a tattoo idea priced. This is the shop featured on LA Ink. So we did that and were staaarving.

We were supposed to go to Cowboys and Turbans but decided that Indian and Mexican food meshing in our persons was NOT what we needed right now. After dissing a sushi place, we decided to go to Good because it is right around the corner from my house and had microbrews. OMG, we both ordered this “Exorcism Burger” and it was the bomb. I got veggie, she got regular and they both come with this ridiculous ring of burnt cheddar cheese around it. It tastes like a cheezit on your burger, so good. A homeless man HATED Vanessa for being alive and kept yelling at her but our waiter chased him off and we laughed. Kristyn came home and we continued to talk about morbid issues until we were all basically drunk on dark beers and turned in.

Vanessa had to leave on Monday to make the arduous trip back up to Sacramento but took us out for Breakfast at Home, a restaurant near us in Silver Lake. And then she flew off out of our lives in her white rental car like an angel with no direction (because she drove an hour past her house and had to backtrack, haha).

Vanessa we had a great time!!! We can’t wait to go up to Sacramento and poke around!